VISION QUEST: FLYING TO SEVILLA

ON 10-12 AUGUST 2006

“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m sure everything will go just fine.”---Tom Wilson, speaking to his father, 10 August, 2006.

My original, simple itinerary went: US Airways, departingfrom Burlingtonat 5:50 PM, arriving in Philadelphia at 7:12, followed by a 1 hour and 43 minute layover; British Airways to Heathrow, with approximately a 7 hour layover there; Iberia to Sevilla, arriving at 8:20 PM on 11 August.

While Lori and I were having breakfast on 10 August, I heard my radio alarm playing in our bedroom. I had got up before it sounded, and I had forgotten to turn it off. I went to the bedroom to do so, and that was when I learned of the terrorism scare.

During the day, I got salt for the softener, did some grocery shopping, and mowed the lawns, all to get my mind off what promised to be a trying journey.

Tom got me to the airport a little after 3:30. I checked in at US Airways and walked upstairs to Gate 1. My only bags were two carry-ons: a small backpack (a gift from Telefonica for signing up with them in Spain) and a well-worn, cloth suitcase. I had not even reached the security checkpoint when it was announced that my flight would be delayed an hour because the incoming plane had a mechanical problem. I went on through and inquired at the podium. The agent assured me that I would still have time to make my connection in Philadelphia. A short time later another announcement came. The plane that was supposed to replace the incoming plane also had a mechanical problem. My flight to Philadelphia would now be delayed two hours. Those of us with connections were told to return to the main desk andget rebooked.

Downstairs, I learned that the two-hour delay was irrelevant, because my British Airways flight, like every other BA flight into and out of Heathrow that day, had been canceled. This was the first time I was strongly tempted to give up and go home. The US Airways agent told me of an American Airlines flight, due to leave JFK for Heathrow at 11:30 PM. It had not been canceled, but it might be. Jet Blue had a flight leaving for JFK around 6:30. If I wished, she could try to exchange my US Airways ticket for one on Jet Blue. I asked her to do so. She moseyed on down to Jet Blue and, less than 10 minutes later, returned to tell me that, no, she couldn’t make the swap, because US Airways would lose money. The US Airways ticket only had a cash value of $25, while the Jet Blue ticket was worth nearly $150. But, if I wished, she could still transfer my BA ticket to the AA flight, and I could buy my own Jet Blue ticket. I said, Do it. I bought the Jet Blue ticket and went to Gate 10.

The Jet Blue flight did not leave at 6:30. JFK had been shut down by a horrific thunderstorm. The gate attendants told us we would get an update at 7:30. The 7:30 “update” was that the real update would come at 8:30. (This was the second time I was tempted to give up and go home.) At 8:30 they told us they would try to get us on the plane as soon as possible. They repeated this assurance at 9:00.

The Jet Blue flight took off around 10:00, and landed at JFK a little after 11:00. Due to the backlog of planes at the gates, we did not get into the terminal until aquarter to midnight. But I wasn’t too worried about missing the AA flight. I assumed it had been delayed at least 2 hours (the length of the storm-caused shutdown).

I took the Skytrain to the AA terminal, two stops away. Inside, the lights were dim and the check-in area was deserted: no one behind the counters; nothing but the monitors flickering POSITION CLOSED---to nobody.

Further on, in another section of the terminal, there was an open counter. I hadn’t entered it earlier because signs over the doors leading in said ‘Security Area’ and ‘Do Not Enter’. But the usual rules didn’t seem to apply after hours, and it was in this normally off-limits place that AA had set up its last outpost.

The room was the size of a college basketball court when the bleachers are folded back.There were posts-and-tapes sufficient to direct a zigzagging queue of thousands. At what would have been the head of the line, a couple of dozen travelers waited to be called to the counter and rebooked. Later I thought that this must behow some cultures picturethe passage of souls into the next world.

My turn came. I had naively estimated that a 2 hour shutdown would yield roughly a 2 hour delay in the AA flight. That would have been fine. Leaving at 1:30 AM, I would reach Heathrow around 1:15 PM, giving plenty of time---even with the extra security---to catch the 4:40 Iberia flight to Sevilla.

I had been very naïve.The flight was scheduled to leave at 3:30, slicing my Heathrow layover to the thinness of fine jamon serrano. Fortunately,I was too tired to do anything but hope.

I got a snack at an Au Bon Pain and went down to join the other passengers at the departure gate. The podium marquee confidently announced our 3:30 take-off time. We all settled down to wait. The air conditioning, not especially cold, relentlessly drew heat out of people’s bodies. I changed into my one pair of long pants. Three AM came,with no boarding call. Then three-thirty, four, four-thirty: the marquee didn’t change. The airline passed out blankets and we covered ourselves as we could.

At some point the attendants told us that our plane had landed, but was at Terminal 4 (we were in Terminal 9). The plane had to be inspected by Customs, cleaned, and catered.

They assured us that they would try to get us on the plane as soon as possible.

Five, five-thirty . . . I was beyond anxiety (exhaustion makes you live in the moment). They told us the plane was at the gate. Maybe it had always been there, or maybe they were putting us on a train. The waiting area had no windows, and it felt like it was deep underground.

Weleft JFK sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 AM, and landed (it was a plane, after all)close to 7:00 in the evening. Iberia is often late, and I still had a fond hope of making that Sevilla flight. Having been through Heathrow before, and having no need to leave the security area, I knew better than to go through passport control. Still carrying my two bags, I followed the arrows to ‘flight connections’ and caught the bus to Terminal 1.

The security people at Terminal 1wouldn’t let me getout to the Iberia desk. They explained that I had to go through passport control, collect my checked baggage, check in with my airline again, and re-check my baggage. I explained that I only had the two carry-on bags. That didn’t matter to them. I went over to the passport control line. I explained to a man who was directing people to the desks that I had no checked baggage. He said that, in that case, I didn’t have to go through passport control. I returned to the doorway leading to the check-in counters. The people there said that, no, I had to go through passport control. A table next to the doorway leading out held a half-dozen books and some newspapers, which had been confiscated from passengers. I overheard an exasperated airport cop explaining to a passenger that the rules were changing so fast that nobody knew what was what.

I went through passport control, walked outside, and trudged around to the check-in area of Terminal 1. I suppose that the thousands of people in there were standing in queues of some sort, but the first impression it gave was that of a stockyard. Most of the people seemed to be just standing. Luggage trolleys,stacked so high they looked like small cars, got pushed through mysterious gaps in the crowds. On one side of the hall it seemed that hundreds of Bedouin sheiks and their families were trying to get booked onto Virgin Atlantic, while, on the other side, everybody else was trying to get booked onto every other airline. I suppressed the thought that, to get anyplace that day (or the next, or the next), I would have to stand in one of those lines.

There was no queue at the Iberia information desk. The reason for this soon became clear. I told the sole (British) clerk what had happened to me. He explained that, since AA had got me in late, they had the responsibility of getting me to my destination (or to hell, but he didn’t say that). And anyway, Iberia couldn’t help me. All the flights for that day had left, and all the flights for tomorrow were booked too. Had I considered taking out British citizenship? (He didn’t say that.) He told me how to get to Terminal 2, where AA had its operations.

Following his directions, I walked outside, crossed busy streets, and followed landmarks.

The sun was setting. I reflected that I was in a foreign country, thousands of miles from home, and alone.

There was a short queue at the AA help desk. I had the good fortune to be called forward by a ticket agent who had initiative and imagination. Vanessa Desouza: I will sing her praises forever. If I am ever stranded in Heathrow again, I will ask for her by name.

She explained that the Iberia clerk had not been telling the truth, but was (as they seemed to do often) dumping their problem onto American. She immediately thought of a way to help me. She could turn my Iberia flight into two Aer Lingus flights, going Heathrow—Dublin and Dublin—Sevilla, leaving Heathrow at 11:15 the next morning and reaching Sevilla at 6:55 PM. While I was deciding what to do, an American woman walked up and asked to buy a flight home. She was husky and mannish. She made me think of Molly Brown: not the sort who gives up easily. The ticket agent told her the flight would cost over seven hundred pounds. She pulled out her credit card. A few minutes later, she was checking in at the first-class counter twenty feet away.

For a few seconds I thought of doing something similar.But I asked Ms. Desouza to make up the ticket to Sevilla.

TheIberia clerk could have done it all in a few keystrokes, if he had been thinking. Ms. Desouza had to retype the ENTIRE TICKET, symbol by symbol. It took her 30 or 40 minutes. If I had passed a gift shop that sold flowers, I would have bought her a bouquet of roses. I told her that when I got back to the United States, I would write a letter to American Airlines, praising her work---and I have done so. As I was leaving the counter, she gave me a fifteen-pound meal voucher. She advised me to use it all at the same place, because I could not get any change back from it.

It was now between 8:00 and 9:00 PM. I walked upstairs to the stores and restaurants. I bought a phone card at W. H. Smith,and I called Lori and my friend Carlos Perez. Carlos asked me to email him the details of my arrival at Sevilla. I went looking for an internet place I’d used when passing through Heathrowin 2004, but I couldn’t find it. So, I went and had a dinner of fish and chips. I also bought a couple of muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast. I had a pint of Guinness (which I had to pay for, because the voucher couldn’t be used for alcohol). When I felt I’d hung around the restaurant long enough, or couldn’t stand sitting still anymore, I went and tried to find the internet place again, and this time I succeeded. A man was getting up from a computer, with 15 minutes remaining on the machine. I quickly sent emails to Carlos, Lori, and the hotel in Spain (I’d missed my appointment with their airport minibus). Then I settled down in the lounge and tried to get some sleep, or at least rest.

Sometime between 10:00 and midnight I got up to go the toilet. A man was brushing his teeth in the men’s room. Because of the new security rules, I had left my toothpaste in America, but I had my brush in the backpack. I asked him if I could borrow a little of his toothpaste. He said, Yes, you can use it. He spoke with a Spanish accent and, from his hair and complexion, I guessed he was Latin American. It is hard to describe how much better this act of kindness made me feel.

Near midnight I realized that I didn’t know where the Aer Lingus check-in counter was. I thought it was in Terminal 2, but when I looked downstairs, I couldn’t find it. I asked two policemen where it was. I call them policemen but they were armed like commandoes. They wore heavy black bulletproof vests over white shirts, and big machine guns were slung at their sides. All they lacked were helmets.

They told me Aer Lingus was in Terminal 1, and they pointed the way to the tunnel that led there.

It was a long walk---five or ten minutes. The check-in area at Terminal 1 (which had beenlike a stockyard) was almost empty now. A few people waited on benches; others were sleeping on blue foam-rubber pads. I was too tired to go back to the Terminal 2 lounge---too tired to go anywhere, really. I wanted to be near the desk when it opened. I sat on one of the benches and tried to doze.

I saw a couple of people walk into the terminal and put down blue foam-rubber pads. I asked another passenger, an Englishman, where they were coming from. They were just out the front door, he said, inside two white tents. I walked out and saw that it was so. The tents had probably been full earlier, but now only a ten or twenty pads remained. I threw 2 fairly clean ones over my shoulder and carried them inside. When I walked through the door, the man who had directed me to the tents gave me a thumbs-up.

I put the pads on the floor near a clock and lay down. I rested my head on the suitcaseand looped an arm through my backpack’s shoulder straps. The terminal’s doors were constantly opening, letting in chilly drafts. It may have rained. I took one of my biggest T-shirts out of the suitcase and laid it over my chest like a blanket.

People started lining up at 3:30. (The ticket counters opened at 5:00.) I told myself I wouldn’t get up until the end of the line reached me. Then, as it grew and grew, I said I’d wait until 5:00.

At 4:00 I decided I wasn’t going to get any more “sleep,” and I got in line. I was standing next to an Irishman on his way to Shannon. He told me that Aer Lingus had a flight for Dublin, leaving at 6:50. I wanted onto it, if only to get out of Heathrow as fast as possible. When I reached the front of the line, the agent told me I was way too early for the 11:15 flight. But, if I wanted the 6:50, I could go to the help desk. There was a very short queue there. The agent changed my ticket in a few minutes. Then I had to go to the end of the Aer Lingus check-in queue---which by now was enormous. To their great credit, Aer Lingus processed it double-quick. Twenty minutes later, I was walking to the departure gate---without luggage (which I’d checked through to Sevilla), and now wearing 2 T-shirts.

The departure area was as cold as a meat locker. Outdoors it was drizzling and overcast. But the boarding went smoothly and, for the first time that trip, I experienced a flight that took off and landed on time.

I had to wait six or seven hours in the Dublin airport. I never left the area near the departure gate. I was afraid that, if I wandered too far, I would lose consciousness and never be heard from again. What strolling I did was mainly to keep awake

I looked for an Irish postcard to send back to Holly Hendricks, the math department’s secretary. (Whenever we professors travel, we are obliged to send postcards back to the secretaries.) I wanted to write:

Dear Holly,

I was supposed to be going to Spain. So, why am I writing to you from Ireland?

You don’t want to know.

But they don’t sell postcards at the Dublin airport (I asked). The only carry-on I’d been allowed at Heathrow was a clear plastic bag in which to carry my tickets. Finally, too tired to walk any more, I sat in the departure area, clutching the bag and counting down the minutes. Outside I saw workers loading luggage onto my plane. I specifically hoped that they would remember to load mine.

For the second time, I experienced an on-time take-off. I was seated next to an Irish family: Desmond, Pastora, and their 1-year-old daughter Maria. They were flying down to visit relatives in Sevilla.Desmond was an engineer. We three adults talked about math, science, Sevilla, and travel troubles, while baby Maria took it all in.

The plane actually landed early, but my cloth suitcase (which had almost all of my clothes) didn’t show up. Fortunately, the backpack did (it had the slides for my talk, my toothbrush, a pair of shorts, and one change of underwear). Pastora very kindly accompanied me to the lost baggage desk and helped me file the claim. I borrowed a passenger’s cell phone to tell Carlos that I might be a little late meeting him in the arrivals hall. The lost baggage office, which is very small, has two counters: one facing into the secure area, where I was, and another facing into the arrivals hall. A few minutes later, Carlosappeared on the other side. We waved to each other through the windows.